Japanese Portraits: Pictures of Different People

by Donald Richie

  No, it can't be helped. Not even when it can. So he finished his cocoa and stood up, smiled, and thanked me for this opportunity to discuss his problem, to sodan suru, to help him make up his mind.

  I did not see Saburo again until several weeks later. It was again at the bathhouse. This time he was seated on a low stool, and Fudo and Kannon were crouched on either side of him. Fudo was drawing hot water and testing it with his finger. Kannon with a soapy rag was carefully washing Saburo's back on which were the deep blue lines of Koi-Taro, a popular and husky little boy riding a carp up a waterfall.

  - It's just bound to hurt a little bit at first, said Fudo solicitously: And the hot water is going to hurt a little more. But you just put up with it, you gamman suru, like a man, otoko rashiku.

  Kannon smiled in a motherly fashion and said: It's the red hurts the most. But Taro doesn't have much red in him so that's okay.

  - He ought to lie down after, said Fudo, worried: Yes, you do that. We can cover for you easy at the shop. No, sir. You got to take care of yourself now that you're one of us.

  Up to my ears in the hot water, I looked at the two of them as they soaped and rinsed the boy. He turned and saw me there.

  And he smiled—a wide, secure, contented smile.

  Kishio Kitakawa

  Though in his final year at university, just about to go out and make a living, he—unlike many—retained much of his childhood: liked stag beetles, would turn and watch moths or butterflies, stop to listen to the cicadas of late summer, loved trees.

  Born in Kyoto, going to school in Osaka, he seemed in the midst of the concrete city to remember those bamboo groves and foothill forests left behind in the old capital.

  On Sundays, after breakfast, he would sometimes want to go to Sumiyoshi Shrine and wander through the park.

  - Why do you want to do that? Let's go to the movies, I would say.

  - We can go to the movies later, he would answer in that reasoned, boyish way of his: But we can go to Sumiyoshi now.

  Once there we never did much. He would walk about and admire the trees, sometimes running his hand over the bark. Though quite tall, on the basketball team, getting ready to leave school, he still looked very young.

  But then he graduated and the next time I saw him he was wearing that expression one sees on young men just out of university, just into the real world. It is not exactly shock, but there is something dazed about it. It is the look of someone to whom something incomprehensible has happened.

  The incomprehensible had been the sudden revelation of the world as it is, not as school and a sheltered life had indicated. Like most graduates, Kitakawa was unprepared.

  In his own way, particularly so. He had wanted to study natural history but his parents had insisted on something practical—business management. What he had learned in such a discipline I never knew. He did not talk about it, did not seem interested in it. And now, suddenly, he was to make his living by it.

  - Everyone goes through this, I said, unhelpfully.

  We were not in leafy Sumiyoshi but in concrete Dotombori, having been to a movie about a sports champ who makes good.

  - I didn't know it would be like this, though. Anyway, I passed the company exam. I go to work next week.

  - What kind of company?

  - A paint company.

  A paint company—could anything have been further from his interests, I wondered.

  A few months later he came to Tokyo, to visit the home office, as he put it. I suggested we meet at Hibiya.

  As the sun went down and we were walking through the park, he said: It's so good to get outside like this again.

  - You don't much in Osaka?

  - Oh, no, they work you all the time ... You know, they paint just about everything in this company I'm with now.

  - Well, that's their business.

  - But even the most beautiful pieces of wood. Like the pillars in the house—the tokonoma. They've started to paint those now. Did you know that?

  - No, I didn't. They must look rather strange.

  - Awful, he said softly.

  Then he looked up at the branches outlined against the evening sky, and I wondered how long this gentle person would last with his paint company.

  Later I thought of him, back in Osaka, in cap and apron, stirring up batches of paint; saw him practicing brushstrokes, making sure the bright colors went on smoothly; envisioned him, now all dressed up—matching tie and breast-pocket hankie—going from door to door with his color charts.

  As always happens to new employees, he was kept very busy. Coming in at the bottom, as one invariably did, there were many jobs to be learned before the business-management level was attained.

  He could not come to Tokyo and I did not go to Osaka, so an entire year passed without our seeing each other. Then one weekend I went down. We arranged to meet in the lobby of a hotel near his office.

  It wasn't that I didn't recognize him. Of course I did, but the change was there too, the subtle difference. The tall basketball player's body now seemed heavier, less supple. And the triangular face, usually that of someone younger, had matured, turned squarish, less mobile. We shook hands and his grip was firm.

  - They really keep me busy, he said over dinner.

  - Doing what?

  - Well, I'm the only one in my section who majored in business management and so they need me for my skills.

  - For your skills? I asked, surprised.

  The surprise must have shown.

  - Yes, he said, for an instant shy, then more nearly belligerent than I had ever, seen him: That was my major, after all.

  Then, as though apologizing, he smiled. This was something I remembered. But once it had been a boy's smile; now it was merely boyish.

  - They really run your ass off in that company of mine, he continued: Would you believe it—I don't get home till ten or eleven every night?

  - Door-to-door the whole time?

  - No, no. I didn't have to do that for long. I told you. Business management. You see, it's a growing concern, so we all have to pull together.

  After dinner I asked where he wanted to go.

  - I don't know. Dotombori? But I can't stay late. Got to get up early. Conference tomorrow morning with the boss.

  - On Sunday?

  - On Sunday.

  - Well, let's see then. How about a walk in Sumiyoshi?

  - Sumiyoshi? It's dark ... Oh—you remember we used to go there. It was nice, wasn't it? But that was in the daytime when we could see things, right? They've got this new film on downtown. The Bridge on the River Kwai.

  There was a silence, each of us thinking of different things. Then: I wonder if trees sleep, I asked. It was indeed something I had sometimes wondered about. Fish slept with their eyes open. Perhaps trees slept too.

  He looked at the gilded ceiling of the restaurant for a second, as though thinking, or as though looking through it to the sky above.

  - Maybe, he said, then: No, I don't think so. They're asleep all the time.

  - Or awake, I said.

  He smiled, then looked up again, the movement I remembered, the mouth half-open, as though in wonder at the firmament.

  - Just look at that, he said, gazing at the ceiling: I wonder who got that contract.

  Hiro Obayashi

  Short, youngish, eyes already ringed with fatigue and heavy smoking, he was a successful businessman—a publisher. His was a small company but, as he often said in his excellent English, "quite vital, actually."

  It was "vital" in the field of children's books, and every year the Frankfurt Book Fair was brightened by stacks of his illustrated English versions of Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel and other works in the public domain.

  They were inexpensively made, the unit cost far below that of the competition, and they sold well—particularly to countries like Kenya—but Obayashi wanted more. More precisely, he wanted prestige. That was where I came in.

  A published author, I had re
cently returned from a post at a famous American museum and was now presumably in search of a position. He believed that if he hired me I could help him attain prestige. He would publish books on art and literature and sell to countries other than those in Africa.

  So he began to woo me. Having a friend in common made it easy for him to invite me for a friendly drink and then a friendly dinner. And since he wanted to impress me, the drink was at the old bar of the Imperial Hotel, and the dinner was at Kicho with its Kyoto food, electronic nightingales, and high prices. Afterward, there was this little place he knew, the notoriously expensive hostess club L'Espoir where the beautiful women, knowing at once who to make a fuss over, admired my tie, snuggled closer, and put a hand on my thigh, while Mr. Obayashi—no, you must call me Hiro, you're a friend—lit up yet another Hope.

  After a number of such evenings, I finally agreed to work for this ambitious man and his vital company because I needed the salary—high—and the sponsorship—seemingly secure. Dom Pérignon was opened, a gentleman's agreement was shaken on, and the hostesses applauded.

  When I reported to work, however, I found a new desk and an electric pencil sharpener but no duties. I had been acquired but as yet my employer had not decided what to do with me. Perhaps he thought I would simply generate my own work.

  - You are to do as you want to. We are proud to have a person like yourself on our staff. As you know, we are having a modest success with our children's line but we would like to expand into something more prestigious—even if it's less lucrative. Here, my dear Mr. Richie, is where you play your part.

  Being a gentleman publisher was appealing (though in real life I never actually met one), and I began a series of memos to the president which were as prestigious as anything he could have hoped for. I remember recommending an illustrated edition of the Kojiki, a publication which would have had all the sales potential of an illustrated edition of Beowulf; a multi-volume history of Buddhist art; and the first English translation of Paul Claudel's Japan diaries.

  To each of these ideas Hiro paid what appeared to be close attention. He seemed to be considering their merits in a manner which did justice to my cultural acumen. And it was with what appeared to be actual regret that he found reasons for not adopting them. Never, however, because they would make no money, for he had already told me that prestige was something he could afford to pay for. In the meantime I was to consider his office as my own and to come to see him whenever I wished—he always had time for someone as prestigious as myself.

  His house was also to be considered mine as well, and I was often invited to a dinner of Kobé steak and Mouton-Rothschild and asked to admire the majolica plates off which we were eating and the real Bernard Buffet lithograph on the wall.

  His wife would sit with us (none of this old-fashioned keeping the spouse in the kitchen) after serving us. She was a vivacious woman, inclined to be talkative, but kept on a short leash. Hiro often interrupted her, never laughed at her social sallies, and when she mentioned Marie Laurencin told her she didn't know what she was talking about.

  It was here that I saw his other side. He had been a kamikaze pilot during World War II, I knew—one of the few who either got back or were never sent—and he believed in discipline. Telling his wife to shut up and go and open another bottle was part of this.

  So was browbeating poor Mr. Yago, his production manager, whom I would sometimes hear him shouting at—usually about getting the price down and not caving in to those rapacious paper dealers, those thieving bindery people.

  With me, however, he was wise father and benevolent older brother. I was given no glimpse of the do-or-die kamikaze cadet, and it seemed I could do no wrong. At the same time, nothing I proposed ever got accomplished. I lowered my aim a bit and suggested the Kojiki as a children's book, maybe with a seven-headed dragon pop-up.

  What a good idea, he said, but that pop-up would have to be all handwork and the people who did that were notorious robbers and he really didn't want to throw money away on them. So he smiled ruefully, reached for another Hope, and told me I was always welcome to come and talk with him; and if I had nothing to do, well, I had that new typewriter now and there were probably books of my own I wanted to write.

  Thus encouraged, I did my own work on his time, trying meanwhile to guess what he wanted me there for. A large paycheck arrived every month and my sponsorship was assured—I had a three-year visa. And so, thinking I ought to do something, I often wandered into his office to outline large, impractical plans as he smoked one Hope after another, and I would leave ringing with reassurances of regard.

  Knowing that he, a Zero fighter pilot, was fond of model airplanes, I suggested a cut-out plane or battleship series. Yes, he had thought of that but he wanted only the best and Janes would not sublicense. Guessing he liked gimmicks, I told him about a new 3-D process which might work in kiddy books. Yes, he knew about it—it was German, not perfected yet. I even descended to scratch-and-smell, where you apply the infant fingernail and inhale the apple. Yes, how clever of me to know about that, but of course I couldn't know that the Ministry of Health would never approve it for a children's book.

  Unwilling to believe I was merely an expensive but useless decoration—like one of the ladies at L'Espoir—I decided that he really needed me to advise him on his own ideas, steer him away from errors of judgment. One of these ideas was to go with a photographer to Majorca and do a series of tasteful female nudes to be sold as 3-D pictures. I came down heavily against it. If it was really prestige he wanted, this was the way to lose, not gain it. He didn't want to become a pornographer now, did he?

  He seemed to take all this in, nodded thoughtfully, said that it deserved some consideration, and sent me back to my desk feeling pleased that I had found a way to earn my keep. I would be an ombudsman, fearlessly telling the truth, guarding his integrity.

  From then on I often went into his office with suggestions. He had earlier had a company devoted to art publications. It had gone bankrupt. This, I explained, was because he paid none of the foreign authors whose work he published and he had been consequently afraid to advertise. If he had paid them, he could have advertised the books; they would have sold, and the company would still be solvent.

  Betraying his first irritation, he stubbed out his cigarette and told me that the company had been a tax shelter, designed to go under when its period of usefulness was over. Then, to lighten a suddenly heavy atmosphere, he smiled and took from his desk drawer a 3-D photo. It moved as you shifted it in your hand, and a naked lady alternately hid and revealed her charms, winking the while.

  When he announced that we were going to dinner together that night to talk about this idea, I told him that I couldn't, that I was busy. For one thing, he already knew what I thought of the notion. For another, the expensive evenings out were cutting into my own time.

  My idea of working hours was still very Western—nine to five and an hour off for lunch. During these hours the company could make its due demands on you, but not outside them. How different the Japanese reality was. Five o'clock came and went and not one of the secretaries hooded her typewriter. Poor Mr.Yago would not even look at the clock but sat on with his calculator till long afterward.

  As resident foreigner I could leave early, but by doing so I was removing myself from that warm family spirit which pervaded a Japanese company when the "working day" was over and everyone was still there, nobody daring to make the first move out of the door. It was around then that the boss appeared, feeling expansive, telling a few jokes, inviting the chosen few out for a few beers. And even for those not chosen, the day's work was often not over. They went and got their own beer and bad-mouthed the boss.

  Mr. Yago, probably feeling it diplomatic to do so, took me out one evening and told me what a tyrant the man was. Hadn't I noticed that he never began his own work until late in the afternoon to make sure everyone was still there after dark? Yago-san seemed to be trying to warn me. Warn me about my boss's chara
cter, I initially thought, but now I believe it was about my own, in the hope of making me conform a bit more, stay late once in a while, try not to break taboos—like telling the boss how to run his business. I had already all but said that the boss cheated his authors, and of course he really was cheating on his taxes. More seriously, I had disapproved of so many of his pet plans (those naughty nudes, for example). I was only an employee, even though I happened to be a privileged one.

  This, I now think, the harried Mr. Yago was trying to tell me over warm beer in Roppongi. But in my idleness I was by then convinced that I had been appointed my friend Hiro's conscience, that I would somehow make him a better person, that in fact he was paying me, as he would an analyst, to do so. Not only did I heap scorn on the winking nudes and ridicule Bernard Buffet, but I proceeded to find ways to make his fairytale books more artistic, insisting we go back to the original Perrault text for the new Sleeping Beauty, and then suggesting we commission the expensive Maurice Sendak to do Momotaro. Told that Sendak was not cute enough for his market, I said that that was the problem and that was why only Africans bought the products.

  I now see the man's patience as monumental, though at the time I thought him stubborn. Nor did I detect his deep disappointment in me—an investment which had turned out to be worthless. So I persevered. Became even more personal.

  Really, he was smoking too much. And he worked too hard. Every hour not asleep he was in the office. All thoughts were about the publishing house and how to make it more profitable—as well as more prestigious. He took no vacations and resented any of us taking ours. This was not good for him, I said—now Dr. Richie in everything but white coat and stethoscope—just listen to that cough, just look at those black bags under his eyes.

  In the meantime, as I went about my medical duties, things were changing, but so slowly that at first I did not notice. I was still attending editorial meetings, and it took some time for me to see that when I talked no one made pencil marks on their yellow-lined, legal-sized tablets. When an important meeting occurred and I was not included, I just assumed that what was being discussed had nothing to do with my department, and took the afternoon off. The boss still treated me with indulgence, even though I was told more often than before that he was rather busy at the moment; and if those awful evenings at his home had ceased, I was glad. I thought a kind of equilibrium had been reached.